


Golden Winter

by orphan_account



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Based on Snow White and Rose Red, Gen, Magic-Users
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 03:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Yuri freezes and JJ goes off-balance on his side of the bumper.“What--” JJ starts exclaiming, but Yuri shushes him fiercely, looking out to the brief alley and the tree border.JJ looks.There is a bear: a full-grown grizzly, blending dark and brown out of the trees.It’s staring straight at them.In the snowfall, there’s just the cloudy bloom of exhale from both boys. They glance at each other.“You’re supposed to make noise,” JJ whispers. They glance back at the bear, still staring at them. Something about it makes the hair rise on the back of the boys’ necks.“Yeah,” Yuri replies in a hissed tone that relays exactly what they’re going to do instead.





	Golden Winter

**Rosnowe Studentview**

_Your source for Rosnowe University news_

_October 9th, 2018_

**Students Missing in Snow Ledge Collapse**

_by Phichit Chulanont, faculty of Fine Arts and Communications_

On this Thanksgiving Monday, many of Rosnowe's students took a much-needed break from their studies. With this year's unexpected early snowfall, all kinds of winter sports are an immediate and popular option. Erkhan Mountain is no exception and the facilities were busy as expected. "Although our ski hills aren't open yet, the lower tube zone is, and all of our hiking trails as well," Darcy LaVallie, head of operations at Erkhan Mountain, explained. "We saw a record of almost four hundred people come through that day."

Among those eager to get outdoors for some fresh air was a group of first-year students from Rosnowe, whose names will be withheld until family is notified. The group of eight headed up a trail rated as medium intensity around 3:00 in the afternoon and later switched onto a path that lead higher up the mountain. It appears that they took every precaution and even downloaded Erkan's Safe-GPS app onto their phones.

"When the signal was lost, we weren't immediately sending out a rescue team, it does happen, they were up there, we have a protocol to wait a certain amount of time," LaVallie said. "But before that time passed, we got reports of a snow ledge collapse up, and we called in teams as fast as we could."

Experts are still investigating the ledge collapse to see if the trail should have been opened in the first place.

"We have professionals who rate our trails as safe or not before we open them. All I can say is this must have been a freak accident of nature," LaVallie commented.

Five students were located immediately. Two are recovering from broken bones in hospital, and three suffering minor injuries treated on-scene. However, three students are still missing. Authorities continue to search, but their efforts are limited as the area must be deemed safe for exploration.

The group of students was made up of, in-part, by the Newcomers Club at Rosnowe, which attempts to welcome exchange students by organizing various activities year-round.

Amir Nourpour, president of the club, commented, "It's terrible to hear what's happened. Nature can be unpredictable. I hope everyone recovers, I hope they find the missing students, I'm sure they're out there."

For updates on this story, follow Studentview's twitter RosnoweSV.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"What's the integral of sec^2(x) again?" comes a shout from the kitchen.

"Tan(x)," comes the reply. "That's the 15th time you've asked me this semester."

Just the sound of someone munching on something and scribbling down the advice.

"Hey, I got the gig marking papers for . . . what'shisface . . . history prof?"

"Popovich. The fuck? You and not me?"

"Check your Rosnowe email. Am I your mom?"

Yuri Plisetsky, 18 years old, supposed-to-be-biochem-major-but-really-sort-of-open-studies, saunters out of the kitchen in black sweats, hoodie and tiger-print shirt, crunching on a cookie with a paper, pencil and phone sandwiched in a hand.

His family's (although his family is just his grandfather and him in the house) room-and-sort-of-boarder sits on the couch in the living room. It's starting to snow and not much light is coming through the skylight, so the lamp's on, warm yellow cast over Jean-Jacques Leroy - French-Canadian native to the country, 19 years old - who's watching a video on d2L.

Yuri munches the last of the cookie and a chunk drops on the floor. Immediately a fluffy Siamese jumps down from a worn cat-tower to sniff it.

"Your cat," Jean-Jacques, or JJ, points out.

"Huh?" Yuri turns around, and with alarm, swipes the treat off the floor before the cat can chow down. He goes to throw it in the garbage.

"I swear Nikolai rented me a room 'cause you need a nanny," JJ calls after him. "Without me, this month, Potya would be sick on Cheeto crumbs and, like . . . yogurt lid things."

The cat, Potya, seems to be happy on the floor and sprawls out to lick a spot on her back leg.

"Maybe you're here because your parents just wanted their five hundred spawn out and he sympathized," Yuri returns, plopping down on an armchair with a black-and-white throw on it.

"Eleven," JJ corrects.

"You were obviously the first fucking one to go."

"That's right!" JJ grins and taps the trackpad, skipping back a couple minutes for something missed.

Yuri snorts.

By now, this sort of jabbering is, strangely enough, an almost-comforting signal that everything's normal. At first, it was a rub of the high school friction between them. They've had their fights and name-calling. But there's a year of separation when the Plisetskys moved away from the Leroys' hometown and both Yuri and JJ seemed to realize that all that rivalry, at least in the same sincere tone as before, was too childish for  _university_ now.

Besides, Yuri needs JJ for Calculus and JJ needs Yuri for History.

The house has four bedrooms, two and a half baths, an upstairs and a downstairs, and is located in one of those old but nice neighborhoods where streets are narrow, sheltered by overarching trees (now bare for the winter), and walking paths through forested area and ball diamonds are a stone's throw away.

Plenty of room for the three people living in it.

"Mm yeah," Yuri says after a minute of quiet with just the voice of whatever prof tinnily coming through JJ's Chromebook speakers. "Making bank."

"The Popovich gig?" JJ prompts, looking over from where he's lounging.

"Yeah."

JJ nods. "I'm going to give everyone, like, 94%. Those things are stupid hard."

"Pah!" Yuri scoffs. "Most of them don't deserve a C-."

"Hardass," JJ says. "Glad you're not my prof."

"Better fucking be, 'cause I'd give your short answers a C- every time."

"Dunno why I got a spot though," JJ says introspectively. "I'm not even in the faculty."

"You're definitely a charity case," Yuri  _ha-ha_ s.

It's Tuesday evening, the day where every-other-week JJ has almost nothing and Yuri always just has a half day. With the missing students, there are no outrageous festivities going on on campus, and anyways, 50% of people are still hung-over. (Yuri swore JJ to secrecy when he laid in bed 'sick' all Monday morning, so Nikolai wouldn't catch on that the minute Yuri was legal, he would, of course, go and test how well he could hold his liquor.)

Nikolai, a stocky man in his early 60s, with eyes narrowed by wise creases and a stiff, salt-and-pepper beard, leaves before supper to the neighborhood council meeting, bidding the boys a good night. He's an odd one; he has a collection of globes on the mantle and the legend is he goes to Tai-Chi every Saturday - though it's never been confirmed - and works when he wants to at an autobody shop, repairing old cars. Otherwise he does it in his own garage, in this house.

The boys eat pasta. JJ turns on the TV. Some commercial for zero-calorie soda gives way to second period between the Blues and the Pens, 1 - 3.

Yuri squeals his chair around to watch, too. They don't talk. It's a blessing enough that there's something they can both enjoy in relative peace that pointing it out might ruin it. Outside the sliding doors that lead the large backyard, unfenced, opening onto an easement and then the forested area of the paths, it's snowing moderately, a fluffy quarter-inch already laid down on the branches of the two evergreens and the twirly-winged blue jay pegged by empty flowerpots.

On the TV someone's benched for slashing.

"What the?! Did you see that? They gotta-" JJ exclaims. Yuri jumps up all of a sudden, but it's for a different reason as he goes to the sliding doors and kicks on boots previously discarded on the small mat there.

"You going outside?" JJ asks, diverting his attention momentarily.

"Deda has this bumper piece out in the back, maybe I should bring it in," he says. JJ leaves his plate of pasta and goes over to join.

"You can't lift that thing by yourself," JJ says. Yuri's on the leaner side, and shorter than JJ by a couple inches. Something JJ's teased him about in much more concrete terms in the past. Nothing as venomous has been heard since the start of university.

"Fucking could," Yuri says, but they both go out into the yard, just hoodies and nothing more, jogging over to the curved metal that's a bright tealish-green being gradually occluded by white.

Yuri jerks his hood up on his mess of chin-length blonde hair. JJ squats down and gets a grip on one side. Together they lift the front of whatever old car.

"To the garage?" JJ says. Snowflakes start to gather and stick lightly on his messy, dark undercut.

Yuri nods and they shift to move that way, but suddenly Yuri freezes and JJ goes off-balance on his side of the bumper.

"What-" JJ starts exclaiming, but Yuri  _shush_ es him fiercely, looking out to the brief alley and the tree border.

JJ looks.

There is a bear.

It's a full-grown grizzly, blending dark and brown out of the trees.

It's staring straight at them.

In the snowfall, there's just the cloudy bloom of exhale from both boys. They glance at each other.

"You're supposed to make noise," JJ whispers. They glance back at the bear, still staring at them. Something about it makes the hair rise on the back of the boys' necks.

"Yeah," Yuri replies in a hissed tone that relays exactly what they're going to do instead -

\- drop the bumper on the grass with a  _thud!_ and dash back inside, slam the door shut and spray snow that's stuck to their shoes and hood and hair across the tile, turn and press to the glass to see if the beast will retreat.

In safety, they can't help but stare. The static of the hockey match is forgotten and so's their meal and assignments left to do.

"It's not moving," JJ says.

"I can fucking see that," Yuri says.

For some reason they're still whispering.

Then, the bear takes a few heavy steps closer.

"It's a weird color," JJ says. "Look at it!"

"I don't fucking care, it's a bear and it's getting closer."

They stand behind glass, cool under their fingers. Sniffing the air momentarily, the bear remains in place, halfway across the easement to their yard.

Still it stares at them.

"You're supposed to call animal protection or something," JJ says.

"Pah! That's lame," Yuri says.

JJ looks at him. "So  _you're_ gonna scare it off?"

"We are. Or, you're not man enough?"

"Sure I am."

They stare at each other in some sort of contest before it gets awkward and JJ breaks away, going to the kitchen cupboards.

"There's pots."

"Yeah, get the cast iron beside the stove."

Soon, the valiant defenders, armed with all sorts of cooking accoutrements, clutch their weapons, brace themselves, and rush back out onto the battleground.

Yuri and JJ start crazily whooping and yelling and banging their cookware.

" _AAAAAAAAAAAUUUU!"_ JJ bellows.

"RRRAAAAAAAAAAA!" Yuri howls.

_BANG! CLANG! TONG! TUNK! BASH! CLASH!_

The bear stares for longer than is comfortable, not moving, not retreating, just staring at this apparition.

And then, it turns and lumbers back into the forest.

The two-man crew freezes, huffing and puffing. They let down their guard, quieted, and watch the beast disappear into the trees.

JJ draws himself up. Yuri goes over.

"Hey, we did it," JJ says.

"What did I tell you," Yuri says, turning on a heel in the yard that's now a rumpled mess of snow and grass. "It's fucking cold, I'm going back in."

JJ stays a fraction of a second looking at the trees and then follows Yuri, pots and pans clanging unintentionally as he jogs to the sliding door that Yuri's yanking open.

" _I_ was the one who suggested making noise," JJ argues.

"What the fuck ever," Yuri says and starts putting the dishes back.

JJ goes to glance back out the sliding door. The bear, it seems, is gone. Yuri joins him for his own confirmation, then sits back down with his food.

"It was a weird color, didn't you notice, sort of gold, its fur?" JJ says.

Yuri, already forking a bite of pasta into his mouth, makes a shake of his head like he couldn't care less.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Yuri casts JJ a glance as the latter bangs into SS103, right on time, messenger bag swinging and giving the doorframe a good  _thunk_ on the way in.

He straightens up and walks up beside Yuri; there are a couple other students waiting in the room: Mila who's in a lot of classes with Yuri, and someone else from the arts faculty, Sara, who looks like she's also friends with.

Sixth floor of the social sciences tower is Dr. Georgi Popovich's domain. The hard rumor is that he's 24 and a genius of some breed. Certainly looks the age; already has a fancy doctorate obtained in the US hanging on his office wall. Not this room; this is a lounge-type room reserved for his undergrad students, not that he has any at the moment. There are chairs, couches, tables, bookshelves lining the room, weird artifacts here and there, an odd red-leaved tree in the corner, some sort of jade miniature set on the main desk, a patterned tapestry that appears mildly instructional and also like something you'd find in a creepy antique ripoff store.

Word has it his smarts made him a little batty, as well.

As everyone's standing around commiseratingly, maybe wondering where Popovich is, the man walks in with his usual purposeful stride, carrying a tray with glasses and water to the main desk, beside which is already a cardboard box with blue exam booklets.

"Greetings," he says cheerfully. He's about as tall as JJ with stiff dark hair that is, admittedly, in a 5-year-outdated fauxhawk, wearing a suit that's the blue color behind electronic device power buttons. Popovich is always wearing a suit. His shoes are dark black and very shiny.

He gives off the sort of air that, if someone told you he was a savant, you'd probably believe it just by looking.

Is he a genius? Is he a witch? Is he just eccentric? Did he have a scarring childhood? Does he have a diagnosis?  _Maybe all of the above,_ the rumor has it.

The glasses go down on the table with a clatter. The jug almost tips but Popovich swoops to catch it.

Yuri pushes himself on his tiptoes as if to get a better view as Popovich rights the jug, water sloshing, with an  _oops!._ JJ gives him a weird look and Yuri backs down.

"All right, congratulations on being selected for this job. I selected you, of course." He presses his hands together with a smile. "There are some forms to sign about your wages."

After a couple minutes everything's signed and everyone has the rubric up and a stack of exam booklets to go through.

"Help yourselves to water, a break, and/or a book," Popovich motions to the shelf as he walks back towards the door seeming to be without a care in the world.

"You're not staying, Dr.?" Yuri says.

"Oh, I trust you. You can call me Georgi," he says, and leaves, closing the door.

Mila and Sara are sitting near each other. They give the other two a short look and then get down to their tasks. There's some brief talk between them; apparently Mila was out on the Monday hike from which a student is still missing. She's got an ankle brace to show for it.

Yuri slides into a cushioned chair, sharing a coffee table with JJ. He flips open a booklet and glances over, then glances at the rubric projected on the smartboard. "Cushy job," he grins, uncapping his pen.

"I still don't know why I got chosen, I'm no good at this," JJ frowns at the handwritten answers inside his first book to mark. "Hey, what was that about the water jug?"

"Nothin'," Yuri says.

"You're weird."

" _You_ are."

"Not."

"Anyone who thinks this is any shade of difficult is the fucking weird one, OK?"

"The money, the money, the money," JJ sighs and starts reading; Yuri's already making marks in the margin.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I didn't!"

"Yeah you did!"

"No, I didn't!"

There's always an odd number of lunch containers, so one has been marked as the no-taker, but it seems that the no-taker is, in fact, taken, quite often, and leaving one of the students in the house with a benefit and the other without.

"It was in here this morning," Yuri says, yanking open the corner cupboard in the kitchen, "but it's not fucking here now!" He bobs his head emphatically and motions with a spread hand towards the vacant space.

JJ pulls the dishwasher open and rattles the top rack out. He grabs his lunch container out of it, a mess of mashed potato traces.

"This is mine!  _You've_  got the no-taker!" JJ theatrically flips the container over, pointing to where there should be a sharpie scribble. At first it was "no-taker" very clearly printed, but then it's sort of grown to a tumorous black rubbing-off blob with "FUCK" in the layers somewhere, courtesy of Yuri.

"FUCK!" Yuri roars, not-so-courteously stomping off down the hallway.

"Where are you going?!" JJ hollers.

"To your  _room,_ " Yuri shouts back.

"It's not in there!" JJ gathers himself as if to follow, but then just sticks his container back in the dishwasher and rips open the cupboards to find protein powder and blend a smoothie. His gym bag is tossed on the floor beside the fridge with beat-up runners tied by bright orange laces and slung over the strap. It's 7:05 p.m.; on this day both students are usually home around the same time. (Unfortunately.)

Eventually Yuri stomps off down the other way towards the garage door, empty handed.

"Told you! Where you going now?" JJ yells at him. Some indistinguishable muttering and the slam-shut of the garage door, clattering around. Yuri was doing some maintenance on his longboard the other day out there despite the snow that falls and melts consistently now.

Eventually Yuri returns inside with the no-taker, won't say a word to JJ, and they split off to do what they do in the evenings when there's not much homework (JJ to play guitar and Yuri to boot up his Alienware for some Overwatch).

Around 9:00 p.m. Nikolai's still not home. JJ goes back into the kitchen to rummage through the fridge for more food. He freezes when he senses something behind him; slowly he turns around, clutching a strawberry yogurt container.

It's the bear, who's padded softly into the dining-room, half-entered by way of the garage door. Weird because the garage door is supposed to self-shut. Maybe it got stopped by the rug getting rumpled up or something.

Both figures are still, beast and man. JJ breathes. The bear stares. JJ stares back.

This stare-off goes on and on. Once or twice JJ's eyes dart to the sliding door that would take him out into the backyard, but he doesn't move. Eventually it just becomes plain weird that the bear is just standing there and doing nothing.

"Your fur . . . is a super weird gold," JJ half-whispers to it after the ticking of the clock has signalled 40 seconds have passed and JJ's not bleeding or missing a limb. In fact, it's not just the gold  _colour,_ it's a sort of shimmering. In fact, it's the bear itself. Something about it seems mysteriously beyond what a bear should be, and JJ's not completely willing to attribute it to his limited experience in dealing with bears.

And the second he says that, he straightens, guard down ever so slightly, squints at the bear's figure: he shouts, "Yuri! Come here!" and slaps a hand over his mouth, startled by his own outburst, and stumbles backwards, hits the fridge, falls down of his own accord; the strawberry yogurt goes skittering over to the bear, who leans down to sniff it -

"The fuck J-"

Yuri's messy blonde head with headphones sitting around his neck appears from the entrance to the dining room opposite the bear. Green eyes go wide with terror.

But the bear is just inspecting the yogurt container. JJ stands up cautiously, back still pressed to the fridge.

"Are you seeing this? Look there's like," JJ squints at the bear.

 _The fuck!_ Yuri mouths. He makes a shooting-gun motion with a hand and points where the bear's come from, the garage. JJ shakes his head; he rubs his eyes, looks at the bear again.

In a decisive swipe, a heavy claw bats the yogurt container open and ripped on the tile. The bear starts to snuffle and snort and lick the pink goop up.

"Heeeey!" JJ cries. The bear looks up at him. JJ freezes. Yuri looks on much how you'd watch a volatile psychiatric patient from behind a safe set of bars.

But then the bear goes back to eating the yogurt.

JJ rubs his eyes again. "Yuri you're not seeing this? There's like," JJ struggles with words, blinking and shaking his head, "some . . . human or something . . . it's all gold and magical and crap . . . "

"You're hallucinating," Yuri says, then there's a flinch across his face like he's anticipating the bear to turn and maul him for this vocalization, but no, the bear goes on eating. In a hushed tone, Yuri continues, "Open the door to the back. We'll kick him out."

"He doesn't even look gold and shimmery to you?" JJ says. "I swear, man, I'm not seeing things -" he rubs his eyes again. "It's like almost he's sort of shifting into a human shape? But he's definitely gold."

"Maybe as gold as any trophies you've ever got," Yuri sneers.

"Hey I got a bronze medal for high school!" JJ protests. But he moves to the sliding door and opens it. "Bear. Dude. Bro. Out time. Go back home," he says to the bear. "Magic bear. Gold bear."

"Fucking crazy human, stop talking to it," Yuri says. He's got a textbook in a hand and spontaneously gives the bear a slap on the rump, then jumps back like he's caused an explosion and ducks behind a wall. But the bear, who's finished his snack, just looks back and snorts, then pads out to where JJ's skin is starting to prickle with the chilly outside air. The bear pauses. It's so big. Its head is level with JJ's shoulders. JJ holds a breath as the beast is right beside him; its shape in his eyes continues to flicker occasionally to something suggesting human before snapping back into definite animal form. Definite gold-edged animal form.

And then the bear leaves. It tracks across the backyard to the rough row of four evergreens that separates the Plisetsky property from the easement.

Yuri's zoomed back to JJ's side. He pushes JJ off the handle and yanks the door shut with a  _SLAM!_

JJ's too busy watching the bear to complain. Yuri peers out beside him.

"It fucking left," Yuri says incredulously. "I hit it but it didn't kill me!" And just then the bear stops at the evergreens and looks back. JJ looks at Yuri whose eyes go wide. "Holy fuck it's sparkly!" Yuri shouts, and then the bear's back on its way into the forest.

Yuri turns to JJ and grabs his hoodie. " _Holy shit it's all gold and shit!"_ He's looking from JJ to the retreating lumpy figure of the bear and back again, shaking JJ's hoodie, but the older boy pushes him off.

"That's what I was  _telling you,_ " JJ exclaims, but he's not angry. "See? See? Did you see it sort of turns into a human ish sort of thing too?"

"I'm not that fucking crazy," Yuri responds, a last glance out. "Holy crap," he says softly. Then he turns to where the bear was standing moments ago. "How did it get in?" Yuri heads off to the garage, stepping over the mess of slashed-up yogurt container on the floor.

"You probably closed the garage door on the rug," JJ says, and bends down to take the shiny-backed lid and plastic pieces covered in strawberry-yogurt-and-bear-spit-residue to the trash. "Wild animals," he says sagely, shaking his head.

When Yuri returns, it's confirmed that he left the garage bay door open, or rather, accidentally opened it while mindlessly slapping the switches that control both the bay door and the light, but the door to the house wasn't caught on anything.

"Let's wake up tomorrow and see if anything else creepy happens," JJ suggests.

"Let's see if  _you_  happen," Yuri says, disgruntled, pushing his headphones back onto his head.

JJ, having cleaned up the mess on the floor, opens the fridge again.

"There's no more strawberry-flavoured ones left!" he complains, but of course, there's no magic golden bear there to sympathize with him.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

JJ and Yuri don't say one word about the bear, like it's some kind of taboo subject. Nothing else in life is golden or sparkly or appears to be magical, especially not midterms looming in the distance.

In the next week, Nikolai is around a lot. He has another neighbourhood meeting, though, n Friday night, and it promises to be long and drawn-out: something about getting neighbourhood banners designed and printed.

Yuri and JJ have sworn each other to not go out tonight. Yuri's going out tomorrow night but JJ whined and whined and whined and Yuri said fine, he'd help JJ with his history 'shit' (apparently it's shit to Yuri) and maybe JJ would keep Yuri's forthcoming gallivanting on the low-down and also maybe do his mathXL assignment for him. So that's what they're doing, in the living room.

"Hey JJ, the girl I keep seeing's hitting on you, Bella, she knows Mila," Yuri says as he flips through JJ's notes. JJ's writing is slanted and a bit uneven on the lines but readable. "I could pull some strings."

"Double date?" JJ grins as if he knows this'll get a rise out of Yuri.

All Yuri does is chuck JJ's history textbook (luckily it's small, really like a chapter book than anything else) at his head. JJ holds Yuri's laptop up to block. The book slaps the screen shut.

"HEY!" Yuri screeches, scrambling over to his computer and taking it from JJ, hunching over as he delicately and carefully raises the lid again.

"Not my fault!" JJ throws up his hands. "Man it's hot in here." He walks off towards the kitchen. "That's cause I'm in here," he adds belatedly. The sound of the fridge opening.

"Why are you always fucking eating?" Yuri growls, nestling his laptop carefully between a couple pillows on one of the armchairs and then flopping back down on his previous sofa spot, digging a hand into a bag of pretzels and munching. Potya appears from wherever she was and meows at him, curls up half-on his lap.

JJ returns with an orange and a napkin.

"So are you!" he points out, simultaneously as Yuri says,

"Don't let that fruit within a fucking meter of my laptop!", venomously.

JJ sits in the middle of the floor and starts to dig open the peel.

It's quiet for a while.

Yuri stares at JJ, who's intent on peeling the little white things off his orange. They gather in a flimsy haystack on the napkin.

"You're so fucking weird," Yuri mutters after a while. JJ looks up. "I used to just eat the peel too when I was little," Yuri continues.

JJ looks horrified. " _I'm_ weird?!"

"It's easier that way," Yuri shrugs.

"Write my thing," JJ demands.

"Finish your fucking fruit and get back to my Laprair . . . my Lapis . . . my Laplace transfers," Yuri jabs.

"TransFORMS," JJ corrects.

"What the fuck ever."

Yuri holds up JJ's notes and a cold breeze waffles them from the kitchen direction. He sits up and twists around the back of the couch. Then he looks at JJ.

"Did you  _open the back door?"_

JJ nods. ". . . . I said it was getting hot in here."

Yuri motions spastically to the fireplace. "You don't open the door, you turn off the fireplace!" he half-shouts. He looks back out.

Sure enough, there's a gold-edged bear lumbering through the backyard towards them.

Yuri turns back around and gives JJ this Look.

"Oh.  _Oh._ Oh!" he says, providing an assortment of indignant tones.

JJ starts taking the orange sections apart as he stands. "Well I just thought he might want to come in," he says quickly, but of course Yuri catches it.

"You - you fucking opened the door for a  _bear?!_ "

"For  _the_ bear! The magic golden bear!"

They're both standing and yelling at each other.

" _It's just gonna take your food again!_ " Yuri says accusingly.

"No it  _won't,_ it likes us now," JJ says defensively.

They look to the door. The bear waits outside on the porch.

"It's not coming inside," JJ says after several seconds.

"I can see that, dumbass," Yuri replies.

"It's waiting for us."

"To go to it as easy prey and invite death," Yuri says, but the tone is actually a little sarcastic.

JJ goes to the front door, away from the imminent threat across the kitchen tile, and takes his coat off a hook, shrugs it on. Yuri goggles after him.

"What are you  _doing?_ You going to hop on the bear and take a ride?"

JJ returns to Yuri, zipping it up and pulling magic gloves out of the pockets. "No, I'm going to follow it. It wants to take us somewhere, I can feel it," he says in a hurt tone, like he's going to do something as ordinary as shovel the driveway.

"What about - what about my math homework?" Yuri says, pointing at the laptop.

"I'll do it after. Come on!" JJ happily leaves the living room, pulls his boots on by the back door.

And sure enough a couple seconds later Yuri is at his side and they're stomping out after the bear, who turns tail and leads them off, not into the woods but along the easement to the path they usually take to the university.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"He still looks gold to you, right?" JJ whispers to Yuri as they walk on behind the bear. It's not just the gold look, either, the sort of haze that hangs around the edge of its fur and sometimes, to JJ, pulls inward, gathering into a human figure. It's the presence of the beast. Something you'd be terribly frightened of, something you  _know_ you should be terribly frightened of, but it's too awe-inspiring and you really can't stay away. Maybe it's even a little too familiar to stay away from.

"Yeah and why are we whispering?" Yuri says.

"Dunno, but do you see he sort of looks like he changes to a human sometimes?"

"No, already told you, I'm not that crazy. Must be just some weird breed of bear . . . " Yuri trails off, as if that is doomed to never sound legitimate.

They're approaching the campus from the back woods route, the boys know.

"And how do you know it's a  _he_?" Yuri prods.

"The human inside it. It's a dude," JJ says.

The roll of the eyes from Yuri is tangible.

"Hey man, it's like magic. You have to believe it first."

"Magic's fucking stupid. Disney and shit," Yuri says. They're still whispering.

"You like that one Disney movie though," JJ starts smilingly.

"Shut up," Yuri says through clenched teeth.

"I remember walking in on you watching Lilo & Stitch and if that isn't the dumbest weirdest-" JJ continues.

"If anyone were around I'd fucking lose it on you right now," Yuri cuts him off.

They've emerged onto the fringe of campus behind the gym building. The bear still plods on. No snow, just cold tonight.

"And that would do what damage," JJ says braggingly, his step growing into a saunter, shaking his shoulders out.

Yuri growls and angles himself into a side-tackle. JJ stumbles, unprepared.

"Oh-HO!" JJ exclaims, pushing off a foot and returning the hit. Yuri sprawls flat on the grass but scrambles up and runs at JJ. They start tussling, rolling around on the yellowed field. Yuri's spitting, JJ's fending him off, Yuri's hurling insults with every successful hit and JJ's trying to talk himself up between breaths before suddenly JJ gasps out, "The bear!", and they both look up with a sort of deer-in-the-headlights expression.

The bear has waited for them, and,

"I'll be damned if he's not fucking laughing at us," Yuri says, brushing the snow fiercely off his black Rock & Republic jeans and then stuffing his hands into his pockets to continue on.

"Oh, he is," JJ agrees in good spirits. "Hey, you know Narnia?"

"I saw the movie when I was a kid."

"You're still a kid. Anyways, the little girl, Lucy, she would like, walk beside the giant lion. She would put a hand in its mane and it was really soft or something. I don't know if that's what actually happened though . . . Do you think the bear is soft? I do."

"You go try it, I'm no little girl," Yuri mutters.

"But you fight like one, princess," JJ grins incorrigibly, throwing a handful of grass tufts at Yuri's jeans. Yuri jumps back like it was acid or a handful of Black Widow spiders thrown at him, and looks to punish JJ, but JJ's gone. He jogs right up level with the bear and touches the fur ruffling on its haunches. Yuri squeaks in surprise, halting and tensing like he didn't expect JJ to actually do it.

JJ jerks his hand back quickly. "Whoa!" he shouts. "You are-" He steps back a few paces as the bear looks at him. "You  _are_ a dude! I swear you're like the frog prince but the bear prince! Come on Yuri touch it! I mean him! Sorry, bear-dude! Bear prince dude!"

"You're fucking insane, Jean-Jacques Leroy!" Yuri yells at JJ after a short break to determine that JJ is honest-to-goodness wrapped up in this fairytale fantasy. "I've had enough! We're following some bear through the paths to school on a fucking Friday night! We should not beon campus on a Friday night! And I'm not touching anything that thinks I should be!"

But then the bear turns around and gives Yuri a full-maw  _ggrrrOAR._ Yuri clamps his mouth shut.

"Now you've offended him!" JJ tsks.

"I'm gonna run," Yuri says, the pitch of his voice sliding up in fright, but he doesn't move a muscle.

"Don't think that's a good idea," warns JJ as Yuri backpedals and the bear stomps toward him intently.

So a few moments later Yuri's trembling at the bear's side - it's as good as tall as him - and he shakingly curls a hand into its fur.

He almost takes the handful with him when he jerks back in surprise, blinking.

" _Holy fuck!"_ he shouts. He looks at JJ, wide-eyed. JJ's grinning. " _Did you - he's - it turned -"_

"I  _told_ you it's an enchanted bear or something!" JJ says triumphantly, beaming.

Yuri's rubbing his eyes and tipping his head and figuring it out. "It's a guy. Sort of. It changes. It's not real . . ."

Then his jaw drops.

"Why didn't you tell me, fucker?" he storms at JJ.

They're arguing over the bear, who, luckily, is patiently waiting and not mauling them to bits out of frustration.

"What? That he's a bear prince? Cause I told you that-"

"No,  _idiot,_ that it's the dude from the hiking trip who's still missing!"

JJ's eyes get wide. "You can't just recognize him, it's so . . . " he looks at the bear and blinks one eye, then the other, ". . . . vague! How do you even know what he looks like?"

"He was in a class of mine," Yuri says insistently. "But I forget his name." He looks at the bear. "Sorry."

"You just apologized to him!" JJ cackles. "You're talking to the bear prince too!"

"Did  _not!_ I just mean it would be nice if we knew his name. . . " Yuri trails off. By this time the bear is on the move again.

Both boys catch up to it and walk in silence for a while. It's dark out and only the lights from the paths show the way. They walk in the grass off the main drag, avoiding the few people going to and fro. There will be janitors around and some people at the bar on campus but that's it.

"He's shifting more often," JJ whispers to Yuri, "Don't you think?"

Yuri squints and shakes his head. "Sure, think so, hard to tell, just a gold haze that's him walking."

"Yeah, but a bear or a guy?"

JJ waits for Yuri's answer as they walk on.

"You're right, he's more a guy," Yuri says.

"Still can't tell that he's recognizable."

"I can. I'll ask Mila for his name."

The bear approaches the Social Sciences building. They try the handle; a chance it might be open because it's a thoroughfare from the train station. It  _is._

The boys glance at each other as the bear heads right in, and then they continue following it.

"You know none of the offices or anything are going to be open," JJ says to the bear as they go down the carpeted hallway.

The bear stops by the directory plate on the wall beside the elevators. He looks at the boys. He looks back at the directory. He nudges the plaque with his nose. JJ shakes his head because he could've sworn it was the man, the golden prince and not the beast, pointing to the row of white letters.

"This is so trippy," JJ says as he looms in and examines the wet blotch on the protective glass cover. It's stamped on the 6th floor, Popovich's name.

"He  _is_ a sorcerer!" JJ cackles. "A-HA!"

Yuri leans in to confirm. He casts a suspicious look at the bear as JJ's still celebrating the apparently solid revelation.

The bear regards them in a kingly manner. Then, of a sudden, it leans in and presses its nose to Yuri's nose, then up to JJ's nose, knocking him back against the elevator as it's sort of got to go up on its haunches a little to reach. Yuri jumps and JJ rubs his nose, and then the bear's loping off, running shaggily out - or is it a man, jogging off? It's golden and certainly very magical, whatever it is.

"The library in SS103," JJ and Yuri say in unison.

"Fuck this is creepy," Yuri follows up quickly. JJ's examining his fingers after rubbing his nose as if expecting to see gold dust on it.

"What time is it?" JJ asks Yuri.

Yuri glances at the clock on the wall. "Can't tell time?"

"Oh, yeah. We better get back."

They start out.

"Hope no one saw us," JJ says.

"Hope you finish my mathXL assignment and get me at least a 90."

"Hope you write my analysis and get me 90, too."

"That wasn't the deal. I promised an 80, nothing more."

"Hope you do anyway."

"Hope you shut up."

"Hope you get more realistic expectations."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Yuri gets wasted on Saturday. JJ goes out to a social-justice-open-mic-thing with friends, on the other hand, and heads to church on Sunday while Yuri's sleeping in, or maybe playing Overwatch despite his bad hangover.

And then Monday they're in SS103 marking papers again, but casually, halfway through the process, JJ looks at Yuri, stretches, wanders over to one of the bookshelves.

Mila looks up at him. Sara's sick or something so it's just the three of them for now.

JJ pulls a random book off the shelf.

"Can't even read this," he frowns, and shoves it back.

"What language is it?" Mila asks, suddenly interested. Behind her several feet, Yuri slaps his forehead with his palm.

JJ tips the book half-out again. "Uh, I don't know," he says. He moves down the bookshelf. For a moment it looks like Mila is going to get up and check out the books as well, but she doesn't. They're very plain books, like the sort your grandmother might have, just a fabric-like cover with narrow horizontal title and author on the spine.

Reaching a dark-red book, JJ flips it open. He frowns. But doesn't say anything and returns to the table with Yuri.

Yuri and Mila both finish earlier than JJ. After Mila heads out, Yuri has a go at the bookshelf.

"You're right, I don't even know what language some of these are," Yuri says spitefully. There's rhythmic  _thunk_ ing as he slides books out, opens them, flips, and replaces them. "Hey, Popovich is definitely gonna notice missing books."

"Of course, we'll just be the innocent little students we are and say we wanna borrow some of his books - actually, no, you do it, because I don't like reading and crap like that. Just be like, you wanna find out what language it is. No, first, ask him what language it is. Pretend like you can't read it."

Yuri's heading back to their table with a white-bound book in hand. "But I  _can_ obviously fucking read . . . " He opens the book and frowns. "I  _can_ read . . . "

"Yeah?"

Yuri looks up and shakes his head. "I can read this but . . . I don't know what language it is . . . "

The statement sounds very small in the room.

"Same with mine!" JJ says brightly. There's just a background hum of a diffuser in the corner of the room. Popovich had said something about Thieves oil and his Sphinx cat brining him a dead robin earlier in the morning. "So just be like, you're going to research about it or something."

"Fine."

So the boys successfully escape, Yuri with the two books, Popovich with a challenging but cheerful expression lingering -  _oh, I doubt you'll have much luck - even I can't just pick it up for some light reading - but go ahead!_

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This Tuesday JJ has his lab so he's done at 1:00. He rushes into the house, throwing winter gear up on hooks and slinging bags on counters. Yuri's already lounging in the living room with his book from Popovich.

"So anything interesting yet?" JJ says as a greeting.

Yuri glares at the outburst of activity JJ heralds as he slams his dishes into the dishwasher.

"No, I've only been reading for a half hour. There's a lot of fucking names. . . it's really boring . . . it's called An Exposition on the Arcean, Volume VII, White. It's like I'm supposed to fucking know what that means and there's no introduction or anything."

JJ's off in his room but he returns soon enough with his own red-bound book and flops down on a chair. He handles it so the spine's facing up and reads: "An Exposition on the Arcean, Volume III, Red."

They read in silence for awhile.

"I hate reading. And bear prince's not here to help," JJ says frustratedly after five or ten minutes have ticked by. "Is yours using a whole bunch of vocab they don't define? Mine's going on about arces."

"Yeah. I don't need this. I have fucking psych terms to memorize," Yuri mutters.

"Tell me, I have this post-lab to do up! . . . I'm just gonna skim."

"You'll miss something, idiot," Yuri says, but after glancing at JJ as he rifles faster through the pages, Yuri follows suit.

"Here!" Yuri shouts all of a sudden. " _Manifestation and First Principles of Selection: As Juniper Alitoit, fifth-generation_. . . . blah blah blah . . . here, something about . . . yeah, so it says,  _arcanic manifestation of the primal should be guarded carefully by upper arces and guided by the first principles as such_. . . "

JJ stands up and sits beside Yuri, matching Yuri's place in his own book. He looks from his pages to Yuri's.

"I can't read your book, either," JJ notes, but yeah, this part is called the same thing as yours, First Principles and whatever."

Yuri's flipped the page. "Holy fuck, it's a spell," he says as he reads.

"A spell?!" JJ exclaims excitedly. "Sweet!" He flips his own page and starts reading out loud. Yuri interrupts him.

"You fucking idiot! What if we don't  _want_ to cast some random fucking spell?"

JJ smirks greasily. "What, are you insinuating that we are, in fact,  _able_ to cast a  _spell_?"

"Well, we both hang with a fucking sparkly manbear so . . . " Glowering, Yuri just watches as JJ stands, clears his throat, and keeps reading off the page. The text doesn't rhyme, and it's rather long. JJ stumbles over some of the phrasing.

Nothing happens when he finishes. Yuri snorts in laughter. JJ looks disappointed. "Maybe I didn't pronounce all this  _arce_ stuff right," he says.

"There's more instructions after it," Yuri says. " _The principle should not be invoked_. . . " But JJ has already started re-reading the spell, or  _priniciple._

"Shut up! It didn't work," Yuri says irately, interrupting. JJ pauses.

"Let's say it together!" he beckons to Yuri. "Come on, maybe it needs two people!"

"I'll say half of it with you," Yuri agrees, his tone begrudging, but some glint in his eyes that betrays the fact he's part hopeful it  _will_ work.

So they start reading off the text together. Yuri stops at the very last line, which JJ finishes solo, and immediately:

"Holy  _fuck_ you're like the bear but red!" Yuri howls, recoiling on the couch as JJ looks down at himself, dropping the book.

"Wow I totally am!" JJ says, enthused. There's a red crystalline fade replacing the usually very solid and very physical limitations of his body.

"It's getting fucking bigger!" Yuri says, which is a terrible way to describe it, but it's true: the red energy is lighting up and transforming JJ, swarming over and through his clothes but more like it's being released from within than covering him from the outside.

"Do yours too!" JJ encourages, stepping back, still looking down at his arms he's holding out that are lancing and swirling with the red shining glow, millions of particles of what must be magic pulsing and moving. A trail lags with his motion but returns to him.

Yuri, eyes wide, opens his book back up and reads the last line.

" _Holy-!"_ he yells and JJ points at him, "Haha, see!", as Yuri's outline ignites white.

"This is sweet!" JJ keeps crowing. "Hey, yours is getting more intense too!"

"It feels fucking weird!" Yuri complains with a tinge of panic to his tone.

"I bet I got like fire powers or something! I bet I gotta learn to control magic or something!"

"JJ you look like you're going to turn into a red fucking laser light," Yuri says, his tone rising with apprehension even as he looks down at his own white-shimmering outline.

"So what? It's cool!"

"It's not fucking  _cool_ if we've just accidentally - accidentally made ourselves -"

"Come on man, I told you it's like magic, you gotta believe it!"

"JJ!" Yuri screams all of a sudden as the red energy that now seems to be exuding from every pore of JJ's body pulses faster and faster and gathers itself into the form of a red lion, huge and fierce, and it seems like JJ the human is completely gone in that moment. But then it's much like the golden bear, just more intense, and JJ's outline remains recognizable as the red glow gathers, but the lion bursts and fades and circles around, a huge storm of red particles and light.

"A _aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!_ " JJ's yelling too. " _WhatdoIdowithitwhatdoIdowithit get it OFF ME!"_ He staggers back, but the lion continues to burst out of him and envelope him, an awesome impression.

And then  _Yuri_ ignites in a similar fashion, a pounding in his ears and chest crescendoing too quickly to an outburst that seems to leap out of his soul, a part that's been dormant until now: a white tiger, crafted from the white light racing and storming and flooding out of Yuri, almost like his heart's been pulled out of his chest.

Both boys in the moment feel the instinct that this power, this light, has to get put somewhere that's  _not_ inside themselves: it's too dangerous to contain there.

They're both yelling and the wild animals made of lightstorms cast the whole living room in a shifting and terrifyingly bright sparkling flow. You wouldn't think sparkly could mean terrifying, but here it most definitely is.

" _GetitoffmegetitoffmegetitOFFME! Yuri HELP!_ " JJ's bellowing, and Yuri's flailing as if he could physically push the huge white tiger off of him, when in reality it's a  _part_ of him.

" _WHAT DO I DO?!"_ Yuri's screaming, but all of a sudden the red lion goes leaping towards the white tiger and the white tiger goes leaping towards the red lion. The bestial figures streamline into a potent arrow of their respective red or white light, the millions of shimmering particles growing so dense the light is almost like a tangible object, and then they pass through one another, the white to JJ and the red to Yuri.

There's a singular colored pulse that spreads over each boy and then it seems like whatever that energy is has been absorbed effectively.

The room returns to normal.

JJ and Yuri stare at each other.

For several, good, long, moments.

"It's in you, I can feel it," JJ says to Yuri uncertaintly.

"Mine's, yeah, it's fucking stored in you," Yuri says. Then he remembers something. "You were all screaming, 'Yuri help me!' back there!" he laughs pointedly. "That was fucking  _gold!_ "

JJ folds his arms instead of protesting. "Well who else was there to help," he mutters. Yuri stops laughing.

JJ and Yuri  _don't_ stare at each other, for several, good, long, moments.

"So . . . should we read the rest of the fucking instructions you ignored?" Yuri says, sitting back down on the couch with his book.

"I didn't ignore them! I just got tired of reading!" JJ argues. But he picks up his book too.

" _The principle should not be invoked without the proper arestone selected by whom may be the upper to so supervise and overlook the first principle, and whom may have been the one to instruct . . ."_ Yuri reads. "See?!" he says angrily. "I bet we fucked this whole manifestation thing up 'cause of this!"

"What even is an arestone?!" JJ exclaims. "Come on, that was fun, and we're not dead, I think we did it right! This book is probably really old! They didn't have iPhones or microwaves or stuff, probably an arestone is like the equivalent of - of - of a gas lamp," JJ says.

"That makes no fucking sense, as usual," Yuri sighs.

"Hey, I gotta do my lab report," JJ says suddenly.

"Oh, yeah."

It feels extremely awkward to have such a supernatural experience and then stop the investigation in the name of schoolwork, but sticking to a schedule might be more comforting than getting deeper and deeper into the unknown.

"I can still . . . like,  _sense_ it's in you," JJ calls to Yuri as he goes down the hallway.

"Same," Yuri shouts back.

**Author's Note:**

> I have only two questions. One for myself: Why did I start writing this? It was supposed to be like 10K and finished. And two for everyone who reads it: do you want more *wink wink* mature content?


End file.
